Love You Still

by Kat Bammer

  “Peter”—Mrs. Brooks stepped out of one group and came toward him—“your mother is so happy to have you back home. Have you settled in already?”

  Peter nodded his head. “I’m happy to be back, Mrs. Brooks. Thanks for asking. How’s Paul doing?” Her son Paul was the same age as Peter. They had even played hockey together during high school. While Peter had gotten a hockey scholarship, which he didn’t take after his sister’s death, Paul had been drafted into the NHL right out of high school.

  “Oh, you know he’s getting old, at least in terms of the NHL. I would like to see him retiring soon. His father and I, we’re not getting any younger and we would love to have grandkids before we die. What about you? You’re married, aren’t you? Are there some grandkids on the horizon for Mary?”

  Peter suppressed a groan, but his stomach hardened. He didn’t want to go into the details of his failed marriage, with Mrs. Brooks. His mind raced for a change of topic that wasn’t too obvious, but he drew a blank. He decided to just go with the truth: How on earth could it be the town didn’t know already? It had been months since Theresa had moved out.

  “Mom, stop the interrogation.” Julie Brooks stepped next to her mother and winked at him. “In fact, Peter and his wife have separated and are about to get a divorce, and I’m thinking about consoling him.”

  Peter smirked at Julie’s grin and the sharp inhale from Mrs. Brooks.

  “Julie.” The rest of whatever Mrs. Brooks was about to say got interrupted by his mom tapping a spoon against a glass.

  “Hello, everyone. I would like to thank you for coming and mourning with us. It was a long time ago, but I appreciate you for all the support and love I have received from all of you throughout the years. Sophie would have been thirty-two this year.” Peter’s mother struggled with the overwhelm of emotions.

  He stepped toward her, but her friends were faster. They embraced and consoled her. Today was hard for her. His mom was coping with the death of his sister most of the time. But not today. The anniversary of her murder always amplified her feelings.

  Peter moved to the side of the room, selected something that looked like a croissant from the buffet, and stepped out on the patio. Too many people crammed in one place always made him antsy, and too many questions did too.

  His wife’s betrayal, and the downhill slide their marriage took afterward, were still failures he avoided talking about. Peter hated to fail. There just wasn’t enough left for them to go on. No love, not even friendship, at this point, and no shared priorities or dreams. Maybe they shouldn’t have gotten married. In hindsight, only his frequent absence and her need for status, from his former job, made them last for as long as they did. Why she even agreed on coming to Moon Lake, when she disliked small-town life so much, was beyond him. She’d been ready to move on as soon as he’d quit. Maybe he’d been delusional. At the very least, he’d been ignorant and convinced everything would work out without talking things out. Now he was alone again. Alone and avoiding questions.

  Peter took his phone out of his pocket. He still had time before he had to leave. He went inside again and took two stairs at a time to the guest rooms of the Inn. He passed the room of the female guest who went missing and his chest tightened. But that room wasn’t his target. He took another flight of stairs until he arrived at the only room on the top floor. Next to it was the entrance to the attic; at least that’s what Lisa had told him when he came up here with her all those years ago. He hesitated for a moment. He should have taken the key from the key hooks downstairs. But Peter tried the handle anyway, and the door swung wide open.

  His stomach plummeted. The room had been transformed into just another guest room. Wiped clean of Lisa’s personality. But it was ingrained in his mind. The room and what happened that day had burned itself into his memory. The service after Sophie’s funeral had nearly killed him. All the people, the noises, and the pain. Lisa had somehow recognized his state and offered him an escape. No…more than an escape. It had been a safe haven, a cocoon where the outside world couldn’t come in, and the inside was a calm, beautiful place, where he could be raw and open.

  They hadn’t talked…she’d just sat right there on her desk. And he was staring out the window. Lisa had put on some music—metal, that corresponded perfectly with his mood: a mixture of self-loathing, guilt, and pain. It had swallowed him like an endless dark hole. But somehow Lisa had shed a beam of light inside this all-consuming darkness. At least for a little while. At least for a few hours.

  They’d known each other, gone to high school together, even had run with the same crowd even though she was a little younger than him. She’d been in the bleachers cheering his team on.

  Cheering him on.

  She hadn’t known it but seeing her up there had given him a serious boost on the ice.

  Every time.

  He’d been attracted to her.

  Attracted, but he’d had a reputation to maintain.

  Captain of the Hockey team.

  So he never let on about it. Until that day. But the level of connectedness, of understanding, and closeness when they came together had scared the shit out of him.

  So his reaction afterwards had been bad. He’d acted as if nothing had happened between them, when in reality they had shared such a profound connection, he hadn’t been able to find anything close with another person since. He remembered their last encounter. It had been on the day he left for boot camp. Their eyes had connected through the window of the small grocery store, only for a second, before she had looked away, which had been her usual behavior after his aloofness.

  The hurt and the sorrow had darkened the caramel in her eyes into the color of rich, dark chocolate. Someone must have told her he was leaving because she had known. He could remember the punch in his gut—the feeling that he might have messed up the single best thing that had happened to him in months. Well, too late.

  He was positive Lisa still hated his guts, or at least had a strong dislike of how he’d treated her thirteen years ago. At least that’s how he would feel were the tables reversed. She wouldn’t be happy with him as a welcome-home committee. And he would rather not face her right now. He remembered the call from his mother when she’d forced her plans on him. Peter had tried to get out of it, even questioned why the Reynolds’ couldn’t pick her up themselves. But his mother’d had an answer for everything, until he’d relented to drive her there.

  And now, he was going there alone. Without his mother as a buffer.

  His mother’s one sentence echoed in his mind. “We are being neighborly, Peter. Remember your manners. You are back home now and that’s how we do things in Moon Lake. We care about each other here.”

  Peter exhaled deeply, turned around, and exited the room. It all had been years ago. A lifetime. He didn’t know why Lisa had left Moon Lake back when she did, but he couldn’t assume she would even remember him. Plus, she had other problems with her father in the hospital. He had been onsite after the accident. As a deputy sheriff, it was inevitable he’d see stuff like that. And after seeing the condition of Carl’s car, his injuries had to be serious.

  Peter shut the door with a definitive click. The past was in the past. No sense to fret about what he couldn’t change. He went downstairs, said goodbye to his mother, and went on his way to Whitebrook airport.

  Easy day.

  3

  Lisa waited for her bag, along with the other passengers of her flight. Her plane had arrived at Whitebrook airport only minutes ago and going through checkout was a breeze.

  No other flights were due to arriving, so security was down to two officers and one dog. Even the dog looked bored.

  Lisa checked the boards. The next arriving flight would be in three hours and would leave again forty minutes later. It would get busier in winter when the ski resorts would attract more tourists and flights would arrive from all over the country. But at this time of year—Lisa shook her head.

  Unbelievable.

  Sh
e really was back in the middle of nowhere.

  Thirteen years ago, when she had started her journey right here at Whitebrook airport, the lack of traffic and people had been normal for her. Of course her mind had been occupied with other things back then. It’d been her first time flying, on her way to her very first job at a diving base in Turkey, where she knew neither the culture nor the language, or any one of her future coworkers—absolutely no one.

  The sick feeling in her stomach wasn’t unlike what she was feeling now. But somehow the need to escape the tense situation at home, had balanced out the fear of the unknown.

  Now nothing balanced out the dread she was feeling.

  The luggage belt stuttered and moved with a screech, and an eerily similar screech of a toddler matched the sound immediately afterward. Lisa stepped closer to the belt right between a distinguished old man and the young mother, who tried to calm the crying baby. The man on the other side of the mother frowned and murmured something which intensified her rocking and hushing efforts.

  Lisa glanced at the mother with a small smile and was met with a distressed half-smile and weariness in her eyes.

  What an ass. Lisa shot an evil look at the annoyed man. It was a baby, for God’s sake. Babies cry, everybody knew that, and nobody should feel bad about it or should dare to say anything about it.

  Lisa’s attention shifted when the first pieces of clothing between bags and suitcases came in sight on the conveyor belt. Wasn’t broken luggage the worst? The same damn thing had happened to her once. In Hurghada, Egypt. The bag with her diving equipment had cracked open, and she had lost a fin in the process.

  Lisa looked around, to see who the poor guy or girl was. The plane had been minuscule, so there weren’t a lot of fellow passengers around.

  Not one of those people waiting in front of the luggage belt looked overly interested in the clothing or even remotely distraught. They all stood there and watched out for their bags, eager to leave this place as soon as possible. Something blue caught her gaze and Lisa’s stomach tightened. The same dismay she had just searched for in someone else’s face, now overshadowed her numbness, which had started a few hours before.

  It was her favorite bra. Her I’m-sexy-underneath bra she’d bought in a little boutique in Paris floated, for everyone to see, along the belt.

  Adrenaline rushed through her body and a red haze clouded her vision as her hands clenched and unclenched. These were her things, her broken bag.

  Lisa picked up all the clothes that came floating along as fast as she could, she jostled the mean man from earlier, and worked her way to the start of the conveyor belt, constantly apologizing. There she stood, with her arm full of clothes and nowhere to put them.

  Tears gathered behind her eyelids. She’d had enough! She’d been on the road for days. One stressful turnover after the other. Fear as her constant companion every time she turned her phone back on.

  She needed a break, just one little break.

  Lisa straightened her spine and wiped her face on the clothes in her arm. What the hell should she do with all her stuff?

  One of her jeans appeared on the belt and Lisa couldn’t take it anymore. She threw her clothes on the floor and leaned into the opening. When she couldn’t reach the straps that concealed the opening, she climbed up the belt. With her sneakers precariously positioned on both sides of the belt, she crouched down and pushed aside the straps.

  Lisa gasped when she saw two men, dressed in neon-colored uniforms. They were laughing like loons when one of them held up one of her T-shirts. Her broken bag lay next to them on the ground and it looked like someone had driven a truck over it. Unbelievable!

  “Hey, you two clowns, stop this right now and give me my bag. And don’t you dare touch another thing. I’ll come back there and hurt you if you do.”

  The men looked up, surprised and a little unsure of the truth of her claims. But her rage and her barely controlled emotions must have shown because they stopped picking her clothes and talked to each other in hushed tones.

  “Ma’am, get down.” Someone from behind Lisa tapped her on the back, barely missing her behind.

  “Just leave me alone. When I’m done here, I will get down.” Lisa peeked behind her through her legs, which jeopardized her balance, but all she saw were men’s trousers, with a sharp crease from the knees down. Great, now she’d caught the attention of airport security… But she was too angry to even care. She looked back through the opening at the exact moment that the two men stuffed the rest of her clothes back into her torn bag and the bag onto the belt. She tried to catch the bag as it moved through her legs and she promptly lost her equilibrium.

  She slipped with her left foot onto the moving belt and face-planted onto the belt. Immediately two powerful hands snatched her in midair and hauled her backward off the belt like a doll. Her back touched a man’s muscular body; his powerful hands still held her by her sides and her feet barely touched the ground.

  Her mouth gaped open.

  Holy shit, this guy was strong. And built. And hot. And smelled—vaguely familiar. Like a cold, crisp winter morning in the woods.

  Still facing the luggage belt, she could feel his breath on her right ear, and the hair on her arms stood up.

  With a soft thud her feet fully connected to the floor, almost in slow motion, and still she could feel the heat from his hands on both sides of her waist.

  She took a shallow breath, and another. She bent her neck, her eyes half-closed. Maybe she’d had a concussion? She was relatively sure she’d hit her head on the belt, but then her gaze fell on the luggage belt and she scrambled to get out of his embrace and to her bag, which passed them again.

  It was a struggle, because it took considerable strength to escape his grip. Adrenalin rushed through her body and her nostrils flared while she tackled her bag.

  She dropped the bag on the floor next to her clothes before she clenched her jaw, plastered a tight smile on her face, and turned to the man to thank him or shout at him—she wasn’t sure which.

  Her brain recognized the man a millisecond before her mouth moved and what came out of her mouth, wasn’t what she had planned. “How dare you?”

  An older version of the man who’d starred in so many of her sleepless nights, stood in front of her. In uniform, no less, with crossed, bulging arms over his chest and a smirk on his face. “Well, hell. Lisa Reynolds. Should’ve known it was you. Who else would put on a show like that?”

  Her body turned rigid and her hands curled into fists.

  “Excuse me, what the hell does that mean?” She looked him up and down. He looked smug standing there in his sheriff’s uniform. Too smug for her taste.

  He held up his hands and bent down at her, way down until their faces nearly touched. “Lizzy, you were an unlit firecracker at eighteen; you sure look about to explode now. Can we please start over?”

  She huffed. “Oh, don’t pretend you know me. But I see you finally grew into your over-inflated ego.”

  And growing he did. A lot. He wasn’t exactly lean back then. As she recalled all too well, he had muscles all over. But now? Whole other ballpark. Well, who cares? He was still an asshole.

  He grinned, which didn't bode well. “You wanna know what else grew?”

  Oh, come on, seriously? Peter Fisher was making sexual innuendos?

  Lisa looked at his crotch, but his smile just turned more smug when her face turned hot.

  “Okay, now that we’ve established this.” He rubbed his neck with his hand. Now he looked slightly uncomfortable. “What was your brilliant plan up there on the luggage belt? Wanted to take a look backstage?” He grinned again. This was bad. He had perfected his signature half-grin with just the hint of a dimple showing.

  Her knees weakened. His grin had always done that to her, but it wouldn’t work this time. She crossed her arms. “Yes, I wanted to see if I could glimpse into the magic world where the luggage was alive.”

  “Guess yours either had a deat
h wish and jumped from the plane or it busted at the seam.”

  “Excuse me?” Was he insinuating that this was somehow her fault? “My luggage was perfectly fine.”

  “Oh, trust me, I can see that.”

  Lisa turned and followed his eyes to her clothes. She scraped them off the floor and threw them into the bag in front of her. Her favorite blue bra tangled next to her face from Peter’s finger.

  “Nice,” he said.

  Lisa’s body tensed when she looked up at him. His eyes glittered with appreciation, and lust ignited in her body before she drenched it with a wave of indignation. She snatched the bra out of his hand and stuffed it into the bag. “None of your business. Why don’t you just turn around, pretend I’m invisible, and leave. It’s what you do best, as I recall.”

  Oh, oh. Why would she say something stupid like that?

  Peter’s face darkened like the clouds did when a storm was brewing, and Lisa stopped and stared.

  Would she see him explode? Had she ever seen him lose his cool? She remembered the hundreds of times she’d watched him play hockey in high school. There’d been some hotshots on the ice, but not Peter. Peter and Paul Brooks had been part of their small clique, so it was natural they hung out at the rink during practice. Nobody ever knew she was ogling Peter while she was participating in the newest chat about lipstick or nail color with the other girls.

  Well. Would’ve been much healthier to fill her head with nail color, instead of pictures of a certain sexy, sweating someone.

  She stood up and tried to keep her bag close by wrapping her arms around it and pressing it against her upper body. It formed an effective armor between her and Peter who had to take a step back.

  His brows were still drawn, but he must’ve decided to let her comment slide, because with an almost gallant bow, he pointed to the exit. “Ma’am, your carriage awaits.”

  Lisa looked at the exit, then back at Peter. She could feel a headache start in her neck. “No way, I’m not driving with you. Just leave me the fuck alone. I don’t need your help, or your sympathy, or anything.” She hobbled awkwardly towards the exit. Damn bag. Why couldn’t at least her exit be a little more elegant and sophisticated?